Slashdot Mirror
Galactic Civilizations Demo Released
Galactic Civilizations is a recently released PC space-based strategy game (see our earlier story on it, or check out an elegant review at Gamespot), notable for favorable comparisons against the none too favorably received Master Of Orion 3. There's now a Windows demo (51mb) of Galactic Civilizations available, originally released via Gamespot, but also downloadable from Gamershell, Fileshack, and from Gametab's BitTorrents page. Not bad for a game originally developed for OS/2 back in 1994.
When are we going to see news on Linux games? I know games have been traditionally released for Windows, but I feel that Linux has reached a point where its stability and graphical speed can be a huge advantage over Windows. I have been doing all my gaming in Linux for just over a year now, but I need something a little different now. KMines is starting to get old. Any suggestions?
The demo exit sequence is a bit annoying. Normally, you can skip through the parts where they tell you about how good their game is. I couldn't, in this demo. While this has nothing to do with how good the actual game is, annoying stunts like this don't help the user's impression. I didn't check whether the intro could be skipped though. Hmph.
This game is really very fun, except it has a couple deep flaws that prevent it from being a classic.
I played constantly for about 3 weeks, until it got reptitive and tiring.
Yes, sometimes.
In some cases, Linux beats Windows on 3D speed, though I can't cite the reference. It isn't across the board, by any means. But in some cases.
There's much touted that the nVidia drivers are single-source cross-compiled for the different platforms. Supposedly with minimal glue, the same source generates both Windows and Linux drivers.
There is also rumbling that the new ATI "Catalyst" drivers use the same philosophy, except that there are also Open Source drivers for the Radeon.
Now all I need is a separate GART driver for my nForce2 board so I can get hardware 3D out of my Radeon under Linux. For the moment, the nForce2 has *tied* its AGP support under Linux to nVidia graphics cards.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The original Galactic Civilizations was a great game. It was fairly simple to get started in it (and beat the computer on patsy setting), but with a large universe and hard opponents, the game was incredibly deep. Any fan of strategy games should give this game their serious consideration. Now, if only I could get it on linux.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
I just want to know when I can get if for the Mac.
Probably 2009, if history is any indicator.
Feh
BitTorrent rocks - Almost everytime I use it to download things it max's out my cablemodem download rate! Noice
Is it a boat?
I played the original on OS2 so I'm biased, but this is one of the best 4X games I've ever played. You can win militarily, you can go tech, you can win an interesting cultural victory. It also doesn't have the "critical mass" problem many 4x games do where you know you'll win, or have no chance, once you reach a certain critical mass. The other AI's either help you or join against you, heavily based on their evil/good sympathies. I've come back from a bad position when other "saintly" AI players came to may aid during a war. I've also lost from a position where I was waaay ahead technologically, but fairly suddenly 3 AI's banded together and whacked me with some coordination. A big surprise after the largely uncoordinated moves from other 4X games. In MOO being at war with 3 different races meant fighting 3 individual foes. In GalCiv it's more like fighting an alliance of foes. They trade techs, and ships, for their mutual good. Anyway, it's not a graphics-lovefest, though it's not bad graphically, but it does have great gameplay.
... and I must say it's a great game, they still have a few issues to iron out, but it's very playable (and fun if you like 4x games).
The support from StarDock however is awesome. They will be updating the game for an entire year after its release, and are giving away a free expansion pack for GalCIV in June (I think). Not to mention this is one of the most moddable games I've ever played, most of the data is kept in text files. GalCivs AI is one of the best I've ever played against. They will come from behind, they will spank your ass, they will fool you once or twice. They are updated to use tactics recorded from the saved games played by the top human players on the MetaVerse.
I can't wait till Elemental comes out.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.